Uttara Sivaram – Stanford Dailyhttps://old.stanforddaily.com
9/15/2019Fri, 15 Jun 2018 19:06:57 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.14Culturally shockedhttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/05/22/culturally-shocked/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/05/22/culturally-shocked/#commentsThu, 22 May 2014 01:23:39 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1085905My first grade Thanksgiving was as wonderfully stereotypical as anyone could have wanted. I sang a soulful, self-written song about being a turkey to my entire class and forgot the lyrics midway, so I ran out of the classroom, flapping the paper feathers taped to my arm and tripped headfirst into the shrubbery right outside the door. My entire class hooted and hollered and followed my lead—20 little turkeys running wild around the small campus. One of them came up to me and helped me out of the bushes.

“Which kind of Indian are you?” he asked. He had painted blue stripes on his face and worn a feathered headband.

“I dunno,” I said, with a shrug. All I knew was that I wasn’t a very good turkey, and that was really all Thanksgiving was about.

Cultural sensitivity is a very touchy topic on this campus—at least, it’s a lot more serious than it was in Mrs. Dorado’s first-grade classroom. Indeed, I was reminded of my own cultural uncertainty after spotting a good number of badly face-painted white people at Bay to Breakers. Which kind of Indian am I? Perhaps the better question is, which kind of Indian were they?

It’s tough being an ethnic minority here—not necessarily because we’re treated differently, but because we have to spend a good amount of time deciding whether or not we should be offended by the rampant cultural faux pas that happen here on campus. I’m blessed with an even temper and a slower-than-average reaction rate to jokes, so I’m usually spared from having to confront political incorrectness, but as my mother says often, I’m (somewhat) one-of-a-kind.

We’re a sensitive bunch here at Stanford, and that’s a great thing. We’re touchy about our holidays, our customs, our families, our interests—we get prickly about almost everything that we deem important. I myself was terribly offended when a fellow classmate spoke out against PBS’s riveting series, Antiques Roadshow, citing it to be “strange,” “antiquated” (I’m sure the pun was unintentional) and “more boring than playing Planet Earth on mute.” Agreed, my passion for PBS is not comparable to our respective cultural ties, but I think the crux of this problem similarly lies in our loss of empathy, rather than our rise in sensitivity.

Either we’re bristling at the guy in a poncho and sombrero on Cinco de Mayo or frantically Yik-Yakking about our God-given right to get hammered on a colorful holiday. In the end, we’re left with a campus-wide, cultural void that no one really takes the time to fill. We’re left celebrating quietly, within our own residences, our cultural groups, our fraternities and our sororities. Indeed, the Greek scene is no exception to this—the infamous “Indian Wedding” was nixed just last year as an inaccurate and insensitive use of a serious Indian custom. Today, we’re so afraid to make and take offense that we’ve stripped our entire campus of the fruits of Stanford’s considerable cultural diversity. It’s quite a shame.

We’re no longer cute first graders (indeed, my mom says I never really was) who can equate cultural holidays with fun classroom activities and sugar cookies and get away with it. We have to start putting in more time and effort to understand our friends and classmates on a deeper level. We have to understand that St. Patrick’s Day celebrates the patron saint of Ireland, that Rosh Hashanah recognizes the Jewish New Year, that we light candles during Diwali because it signifies the victory of light over darkness. We have to be mindful of the Native American community when we tape feathers onto our heads for the latest progressive. We have to be better.

But when we ostracize our peers for those cultural faux pas that we will all inevitably make, we destroy any and all desire for cultural discovery. When we make culture into an in-group, out-group issue, we turn some of the most beautiful cultural customs into campus-wide protests. It’s a shame that we’re afraid to celebrate cultures that aren’t our own for fear of offending some corner of our campus. And because we’re so busy picketing and drinking and Yik-Yakking, our campus is now in a hopeless state of cultural paralysis.

It’s not an easy fix, and I don’t have a quick solution. But if we all relaxed our grips on what we believe to be “correct” or “justified,” we may just end up with a campus that can boast diversity beyond a list of stats on a Stanford Admit Weekend brochure. So grab a sari, grab a bindi, grab a CTM and come celebrate on the quad with me next Diwali. No singing this time, I promise.

Contact Uttara Sivaram at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/05/22/culturally-shocked/feed/3Dear RCC…https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/05/01/dear-rcc/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/05/01/dear-rcc/#commentsThu, 01 May 2014 07:41:09 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1085160Every year, the number of computer science majors who apply to be a dorm Residential Computer Consultant (RCC) shrinks a little, thanks to well-meaning, bright-eyed and eager students like me. We can’t remember what life was like before the MacBook Pro and the Apple-Option-Escape, but we wouldn’t mind a single room and the most stable yet undeserved source of income we’ll likely receive for the next few years.

That said, despite my psychology major, I’m not a complete rookie when it comes to computers—I grew up in the Silicon Valley, took CS 106A and recently learned how to embed GIFs in Gmail. However, my ability to troubleshoot Wi-Fi connectivity is still limited to opening Chrome, Googling “Hello,” and if all else fails, removing the battery. Nevertheless, I owe it to my future residents to treat this position as a learning experience rather than a surefire way to avoid the Draw, so I have created a “Dear RCC” column to practice my duty as a computer consultant and to encourage other RCCs to brainstorm solutions to even the trickiest of problems. My hope is that students will feel comfortable coming to me with any and all computer-related issues—and hopefully strike up a good conversation in the meantime!

***

Dear RCC,

My Internet isn’t working; what should I do???

Love,

Ornery in Okada

Dear Ornery in Okada,

I’m very sorry to hear that. Indeed, my Internet was also acting up this morning after I took it into the shower with me and put my “Norah Jones” playlist on maximum volume. I ended up taking a longer than average shower due to the slow cadence of Norah Jones’s singing, so when I toweled myself and my MacBook Air off, I noticed that a few things were awry (with my laptop—I was of course feeling gloriously refreshed). For one, it refused to turn on, so I submerged it in rice (brown, quinoa mix) and waited for about three hours. After that, the Internet was working extremely efficiently, and I was able to order a “St. Bernards in the Alps” calendar before it went off Amazon Prime.

In summary, I’ll receive that calendar in two business days, which I consider a huge personal success. I hope this helps you with your problem! These situations can be frustrating, but it is important to go about your day as usual. Good luck!

Sincerely,

RCC

***

Dear RCC,

My last computer crashed, and I lost everything on it—how do I make sure that it doesn’t happen again?

—Nervous in Narnia

Dear Nervous in Narnia,

Very sorry to hear that—I’m guessing you were playing Tetris on Marathon mode and the entire computer overheated. When you put yourself and your computer into such high-stress situations, it is crucial that you have all the lights turned off and a powerful fan nearby for at least 24 hours, since we all know that pausing a Tetris game on Marathon mode is akin to taking a bathroom break in the middle of the SAT and getting a 2400.

You should also start thinking more seriously about the kinds of information you keep on your laptop. I print out every important document I own, and I burn my favorite songs onto CDs and cassette tapes. This is not only economical, but also makes your room look like it could belong to a famous screenwriter or perhaps the guy from “A Beautiful Mind,” who believes he is a spy and collects newspaper clippings. Everything else I value is on YouTube, and that can be accessed from most major computers (except the ones in Green that only allow you to print and look at the emergency exit diagrams).

I hope that helps. Please be sure to let your friends know about these life hacks, because I am asked about this problem far too often, which can be a very tearful experience (on both sides).

Sincerely,

RCC

***

Dear RCC,

I think I clicked on a bad link, and now my computer has a virus. How do I get rid of it????

—Hacked at Haus Mitt

Dear Hacked at Haus Mitt,

That is serious indeed. May I ask why you were motivated to click on said link? Indeed, during the winter months, I thought I would start getting fit so I would look my best in Cabo, at Coachella, on Wilbur Field, etc. However, I wished to do this with minimal upper and lower body movement, so (as you can imagine) I was having quite a difficult time finding the right regimen. One day, a link that promised to reveal three secret tricks for an incredible body transformation within one to two weeks suddenly and unexpectedly popped up on my Twitter feed. I happily entered my credit card information (it was the least I could do) and waited to receive these pearls of wisdom as I teetered on the edge of my computer chair.

Alas, I should have known this was too good to be true. Within seconds, Google Chrome had shut down, a newer version of iTunes began to download (not entirely a bad thing) and all 47 of my sticky notes began disappearing from my desktop (which was devastating, as I had been working on a quite a few springtime haikus on those notes). I also got a call from my bank, which had been alerted by the purchase of 400 Chia pets from Guangdong, China.

I had been phished, as they say in certain computing circles. The phrase was derived in the same way that “phat” and “phabulous” were derived from Ludacris’s hit song “Phat Rabbit.” In the future, it is important to note that sites asking for your personal information are probably not entering you into their iPad mini raffle. We have all made that mistake, so do not feel too foolish.

There is little you can do other than disassembling your computer entirely and placing each part in a separate location. This will ensure that the infected region of the computer does not spread the infection to the other, healthy parts. As your computer waits in quarantine, try and find the silver lining to this situation and spend time with friends, family and the environment. Spend a few days camping or meditating. Let your body detox along with your infected computer. I promise that this will only make the reunion with your laptop more meaningful.

***
I plan to maintain this correspondence in my residence, perhaps in a weekly newsletter, to ensure anonymity and allow my students to speak their minds. I know I have a long road ahead of me—as do my other, more inexperienced RCC peers—but I have no doubt that my dedication and commitment to my residents will compensate for my (few) personal shortcomings as a computer consultant.

And if my recent midterm grade is any indication of how I’ll do as an RCC, then a C+ isn’t a bad omen.

Uttara Sivaram thinks Karel is a real person. Convince her otherwise at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/05/01/dear-rcc/feed/1The SAT facelifthttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/04/17/the-sat-facelift/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/04/17/the-sat-facelift/#commentsThu, 17 Apr 2014 01:26:24 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1084538In the 7th grade, I was accepted into a program that would, among other things, allow me to take the SAT that same year. I had been watching my brother, who was a junior in high school at the time, take practice tests and memorize hundreds of ridiculous words like “lachrymose,” “abstersive” and “hebetude.” Needless to say, I was woefully unprepared in comparison; I finished three practice multiple choice questions before getting distracted and sneaking outside. After all, I was twelve years old, and the biggest concern in my life was passing the sit-up test in P.E. The SAT could wait.
I did abysmally. I got the kind of score you get if you skip a question on the scantron and continue to mis-bubble in the rest of the answers. And because I was an impressionable 7th grader, I took it hard — I didn’t watch TV for the next month because I was taking practice tests in the hope that my first score was bad luck. The result? I got really, really good at the SAT and really, really bad at sit-ups.

The College Board, which created and manages the SAT, has redesigned the standardized test to make it both easier and more relevant for rising college freshmen. This includes certain structural changes: no penalty for wrong answers, an optional essay and a 1600-point scale, rather than the 2400-point one (which would make my 7th grade score more impressive, but not by much). The new design also includes an altered vocabulary section, which is meant to test aptitude for much more commonly used words. Finally, the College Board realized that memorizing the term “paracentesis” would be utterly useless for everyone except for the few unfortunate pre-meds who would understand it all too well.

As for the more fundamental changes, the SAT has been redesigned to test analytical thinking, rather than rote memory or course-specific information. This means more graphs, charts and texts that require critical thinking. In addition, the math portion of the test will be extended, and will require students to put away their calculators for certain sections, emphasizing analytical skills rather than dexterity with a calculator.

Will this new version be easier? Maybe initially, but students have a knack for making a competition out of nearly anything, so I have no doubt that the SAT will readjust to its original degree of difficulty after a few classes of pleasantly surprising high school seniors. Indeed, I had grown quite fond of the “old” SAT, so when I first heard of these revisions, I was surprised, angry, nostalgic and a little embarrassed at the depth of feeling I had about this piece of news. But after gathering my thoughts and emotions, I’ve decided that these changes are an excellent first step to changing the way we think about and utilize standardized testing.

I believe in IQ. I think that if anything, it’s one statistic among many that describes a student well, especially in relation to his or her peers. And I think that by shifting the SAT’s emphasis towards analytical aptitude, we’re closer to making the SAT a more accurate measure of IQ, rather than a reflection of SES or high school savviness — or, in my case, a portrait of a girl who could have spent more time with friends, and less time comparing SAT scores with her anonymous rivals on College Confidential.

It became increasingly apparent to me, upon entering Stanford as a freshman, that only a few principles and skills from high school were actually useful in my college classes: QUICKLY reading and understanding long texts, writing well and concisely, and more than anything, understanding every inch of a normal curve — at least for the sake of knowing whether you fell above or below the mean on a test. And the thing is, standardized tests have the incredible power to change curricula nationally. Throw in a section on reading scatterplots, and you have a concerned school board petitioning for an extra week spent on data analysis. If high school is (in part) a crash course for students before they step into their first lecture series, then the College Board is certainly catering to those needs.

After all, these are the basics. While college classes are tough, they’ll review everything from the Pythagorean theorem to the process of passing a bill in Congress. It’s quick thinking that your college course will expect, and if the professor makes you use an iClicker, then your secret inability to multiply anything larger than 10 x 11, or locate Ukraine on a map, will be painfully apparent.

So I applaud College Board’s revision of the SAT, as fond as my memories are of its distant, 2400-scaled cousin. My sister, a high school freshman, will be taking this newer version as soon as it’s implemented, and I can’t wait to do the practice tests with her. Just for old times’ sake.

Uttara Sivaram would like to remind you that paracentesis is a medical procedure to remove fluid from the abdominal cavity. Ask her for more vocabulary words at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/04/17/the-sat-facelift/feed/1A White House of Cardshttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/02/27/a-white-house-of-cards/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/02/27/a-white-house-of-cards/#commentsThu, 27 Feb 2014 11:00:53 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1082768Campus has been unusually quiet for the past two weeks. It would make sense to chalk it up to a protracted midterm season, but I have a feeling (and a Facebook newsfeed to back it up) that Netflix’s release of the entire second season of House of Cards has something to do with it—heck, I even updated Microsoft Silverlight for the occasion.

Indeed, I’d be a little suspicious of anyone who claimed immunity to Frank Underwood’s honeyed Southern charm, which is why I’ve decided to pay homage to this fictional icon. So with my considerable power as a Stanford Daily columnist, I’ve arranged for a little meeting between two of the most powerful people to grace our laptop screens and our nation.

Frank Underwood, meet President Barack Obama.

NOTE: This is best enjoyed with a little imagination and a slow, syrupy South Carolinian accent.

Barack Obama knocks on the front door of a small, stately townhouse somewhere in D.C. The door opens and Obama is standing face-to-face with Frank Underwood.

UNDERWOOD: Mr. President, how nice of you to visit.

OBAMA: Frank. Good to see you. Beautiful home.

UNDERWOOD: Oh, it does its job. Come on in, Mr. President.

OBAMA: Call me Barack.

UNDERWOOD: Maybe after a few drinks, Mr. President. Now, what can I help you with? Actually, let’s start with what I can’t help you with, because that’ll go by a lot faster.

OBAMA: Listen, Frank—

UNDERWOOD: I can’t help you with your Healthcare.gov website. I have absolutely no idea how the Internet works, which is why I hire people who know people who can make a damn website. My God, man—if a Harvard dropout who wouldn’t know a bespoke suit if he saw one can create Facebook, I’m pretty sure my 15-year-old neighbor can make a better healthcare website.

OBAMA: Agreed, but I’ve got my best guys on it.

UNDERWOOD: I’m pretty sure you just have Sasha and Malia on it, bless them, because they probably set up your LinkedIn profile for you a year ago and you were impressed. Speaking of, I also can’t help you get that dog of yours to look more photogenic in pictures. I mean, I can get rid of the dog if you’d like. It’s just such a poor choice of pet.

OBAMA: Is that all?

UNDERWOOD: Yes. I can probably help you with anything else at this point, since I’ve wielded more power from my bathtub than you currently do in the Oval Office.

OBAMA: Right now I’m concerned about Karzai—if he doesn’t sign the Bilateral Security Agreement soon, we’ll lose useful territory in the Middle East when he leaves office.

UNDERWOOD: Karzai is never leaving office—he’s moving next door to the Presidential palace once his term is over. He’s holding onto the last ace in his hand—the BSA—give himself a little leverage. So hit him where it hurts.

OBAMA: Iraq?

UNDERWOOD: Family. He’s got his little brother, Abdul Qayum Karzai, up to bat for the coming elections. Make sure he knows we won’t stand by a nepotistic, fixed election. Unless, of course, he signs the BSA, at which point we “get distracted.”

OBAMA: I don’t plan on working with Karzai after his term expires—it’s a waste of time. Plus, I really do hate the guy.

UNDERWOOD: Don’t. Invite him over to the residence, you and Michelle, for some BBQ ribs and sweet tea. He’s in for the long haul.

OBAMA: Ribs, Frank? Really?

UNDERWOOD: Exactly. Shake with your right hand, but hold a rock in your left.

OBAMA: Well, in this case, a pork rib.

UNDERWOOD: Less poetic, but fine.

OBAMA: How about surveillance reform? It’s one of the biggest issues pulling my approval numbers down.

UNDERWOOD: I’m a huge fan of what you’ve done with the NSA. Claire and I look through phone records during breakfast. Sometimes we just check each other’s phone records instead of communicating.

OBAMA: The American people don’t like it, and I can’t blame them. Plus, I made a promise to find an alternative during my State of the Union speech.

UNDERWOOD: Which was tame, by the way. I was able to paint half my Civil War diorama while listening to it—that’s how boring it was.

OBAMA: Fine, but what am I supposed to do about—

UNDERWOOD: Just get some private phone companies on the phone, tell them to keep the records we make and allow the government to periodically search them.

OBAMA: How do we know the phone companies will agree to comply with our orders when we need them?

UNDERWOOD: It’s the government, Mr. President, not the AT&T CEO’s daughter who wants to check her boyfriend’s phone record. If the Pentagon asks them to bend for national security purposes, they will. And if they don’t, make sure you store the records with multiple companies.

OBAMA: Edward Snowden.

UNDERWOOD: Should’ve gotten rid of him years ago. Blame it on the Chinese.

OBAMA: He’s a thorn in my side, Frank. He undermines every move I make in good faith.

UNDERWOOD: Even Achilles was only as strong as his heel. Find a way to make Snowden disappear. He’s not “opening the debate about national security and privacy.” He’s opening the floodgates of the Potomac to watch the White House drown.

OBAMA: That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?

UNDERWOOD: Mr. President, have you even seen my show?

OBAMA: I have, and I gotta say, Frank—I’m very glad you’re fictional.

UNDERWOOD: Me too. If you’re the president reality has to offer, then I’d rather just stay with Netflix.

OBAMA: I don’t have much time left in office, Frank. I know I’ve been disappointing, but it hasn’t been an easy eight years. I inherited a terrible economy and a pack of vengeful Republicans that don’t want to do anything but tear me down.

UNDERWOOD: Well, I inherited high cholesterol, a weakness for sweet tea and a mild intolerance for lactose. So I run, drink more sweet tea and forbid milk from coming within a 10-foot radius from my office.

OBAMA: Not sure if that’s relevant.

UNDERWOOD: Me neither, I think I’m just hungry. Point is, you’ve got a Congress that’s so rogue it would put that crazy tiger in India to shame. And you’ve showed your frustration, you’ve kicked doors, you’ve belittled them in speeches but you haven’t drawn blood. Or at least, when you have, they’ve drawn yours as well.

OBAMA: Bills need to get passed, Frank. It’s a matter of diplomacy.

UNDERWOOD: In Gaffney, we have our own brand of diplomacy—

OBAMA: We’re not in Gaffney, Frank, so whatever crazy saying you have about holding rocks and shaking hands and drawing blood isn’t going to cut it.

UNDERWOOD: Fine, Barack, FINE. You have Iran’s disarmament bill you have to get past Congress and the P6. Don’t mess this one up by doing something as stupid as hosting another damn fundraiser with Jay-Z and Beyonce instead of meeting with Netanyahu. Get Republican staffers to the table, brief the senators about what happened in Geneva and don’t you dare lift one sanction—Iran hasn’t shown a single act of good faith.

OBAMA: I think I liked it better when you called me “Mr. President.”

UNDERWOOD: I think I don’t like you either way. But if there’s one thing for sure, you are not going to spend the rest of your presidency as the lame duck you have been for the past six years. You can fix this.

OBAMA: Thanks for the drink, Frank.

UNDERWOOD: Come back again when Claire’s home. You like ribs, right?

OBAMA: Love ‘em.

UNDERWOOD: Well now, that’s a great step in the right direction.

Note: this column was inspired by Maureen Dowd’s 2008 column in the NYTimes in which Dowd arranges for a fictional meeting between The West Wing’s President Bartlet and the real President Obama.

Contact Uttara Sivaram at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/02/27/a-white-house-of-cards/feed/1Ten Years of Kanyehttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/ten-years-of-kanye/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/ten-years-of-kanye/#commentsThu, 13 Feb 2014 00:56:01 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1082328Tuesday marked the 10th anniversary of Kanye West’s enormously successful studio album, The College Dropout. Indeed, the occasion may have been even more momentous than West’s own birthday in June, which he spent with Beyoncé, Scott Disick, his Maybach and a birthday cake that allegedly had a net cost of about $13 million.

The hip-hop artist, songwriter, fashion designer, producer, film director, entrepreneur, philanthropist and self-titled musical “scholar” has had quite the decade, spent squarely in the media’s crosshairs as he discovered new and exciting ways of shocking the general public—and picking up 21 Grammys and a few misdemeanors along the way. It isn’t enough to simply say that controversy has followed Mr. West—Kanye has invited media attention to his (very ornate) front door, from calling George W. Bush racist on TV to comparing himself to a war veteran.

But on Tuesday, we put these (mostly) minor speed bumps in the greater context of Kanye’s highly acclaimed body of work, a collection that has inspired some of the most insightful conversations about race relations, class struggle, violence and drug culture in the U.S. On Tuesday, we asked, among many things, “What can we learn from Kanye West?”

The great ancient Chinese military expert, Sun Tzu, wisely said, “Know your enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a thousand battles.” Kanye says, just as wisely, “Believe in your flyness, and conquer your shyness.”

From Kanye, we can learn confidence—boundless and bullish confidence, undiminished by the harshest of spotlights and the most unforgiving of critics. On the one hand, West’s audacity is overt and gaudy; on the other, he is brooding and vulnerable—he unblushingly reveals the very best and the very worst of himself because ultimately, he loves himself.

Kanye deeply, unconditionally and profoundly adores Kanye. As a result, his songs are no longer subject to market forces or media critique. Perhaps they never were. Everything West creates is so genuinely loved and cherished by himself that metrics of popular “success” and “failure” become irrelevant. “Now I could let these dream killers kill my self-esteem,” West raps, “Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams.”

From Kanye, we can learn how to be different, and to be better at being different. Every day, we grow—physically, intellectually, personally—but only within certain boundaries: the structures we live within. Standards have been set, and we funnel through our talents with these standards as our rails, much like the ones they put up in bowling alleys to ensure the ball never rolls astray.

And instead of changing these standards, we change ourselves. From College Dropout to 808’s & Heartbreak, and, most recently, to the often grating, collective tune of Yeezus, Kanye has carved out a niche for his work in the midst of an increasingly predictable hip-hop universe. Like Kanye, we can learn how to not simply find a place in the world but make a place in the world—and to forge that place from the very essence of what makes us great.

From Kanye, we’ve learned the devastating price of hubris. We’ve watched how a brilliant artist has been unceremoniously knocked from his pedestal, destined to spend his future displayed on the homepage of Jezebel by merely believing in his own perfection. “He that is proud eats up himself,” said Shakespeare. “Pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle.” Kanye, self-proclaimed as both a modern Shakespeare and the next Steve Jobs, proclaims, “You all want me to be great, but don’t want me to say I’m great?!”

Unfortunately, Kanye, yes; you and Richard Sherman have the unfortunate burden of brilliance without humility. And because of this, Kanye will never learn. It’s as if The Kanye West genre (TM) evolves without him, changing stylistically but never substantially. See, there’s a real value in honest self-critique, and it’s lacking in Kanye’s entire body of work. And because Kanye never looks back, Kanye never moves forward.

Kanye will continue to make beautiful songs and party with Beyoncé and buy luxury cars, but he will never truly know his greatness, for he will never understand the context in which he is great. As a result, he is stuck, a maladaptive character in his own book, who “wouldn’t change by the change, or the game, or the fame, when he came, in the game, he made his own name.” Kanye is bound to his own dark, twisted fantasy, exceptional and alone.

We can learn quite a bit from Kanye West. You wouldn’t really believe it from his interviews and radio talks, where he usually rambles about Chicago and Kim Kardashian and why exactly he thinks he’s Jesus. But on Tuesday, we had a chance to remember the Kanye that had a way of expressing pride and pain in the same verse, the Kanye that made us laugh with his puns, the Kanye that changed the game by merely being in it.

Happy 10th anniversary to you, Kanye. Thank you for giving more and more of yourself to us every year. Thank you for allowing us to hate you publicly and love you privately. Thank you for marrying the only woman who would put you in the media more than you already are. Thank you for naming your daughter something as absurd as a compass direction. Thank you for being Kanye West, because in truth, none of us would have the courage to rise so high and fall so far.

Contact Uttara Sivaram at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/02/13/ten-years-of-kanye/feed/1Financial Needs and Deedshttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/01/30/financial-needs-and-deeds/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/01/30/financial-needs-and-deeds/#respondThu, 30 Jan 2014 03:30:25 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1081914It’s about time someone rolled a keg down to the Career Development Center. The grad students at Munger have already devised a drinking game for every time they spot a nervous undergrad shuffling past the Haas Center, clutching a soggy resume in one hand and a copy of The Economist in the other. There’s no doubt about it – jobs season is in full swing here at Stanford, and it affects everyone, whether you’re a CDC regular or just a supportive friend who knows the interview loop by way of osmosis.

I myself probably helped a few amused Munger-ites get a little more tipsy when I moseyed over to East Campus, memorizing the perfect stock pitch and trying to remember a time when I worked well in a team. This is the first time I’ve gone through this bizarre process: Last year, I was hired via Skype and based in the Bay, where jeans and the obligatory Dropbox tee can go a long ways.

In all seriousness, I’ve never been quite so astounded by a campus trend, especially since I myself can admit to having a (minor) role in this mass exodus to Wall Street. As I walk through it myself – accompanied by a good chunk of my graduating class – I’ve had plenty of time and inspiration to think about the Fabulous Finance Fad, or more fondly, the FFF. Which means, of course, that I must choose my words very carefully – accompanied, perhaps, by a good analogy.

Each year, about three percent of high school basketball players (male and female) are recruited to play in college. Of those, a staggering one percent make it to the pros, where they will get to schmooze with LeBron on the court and Beyonce off it. As early as the transition between high school to college, the prep-to-pros filtration system is deadly for these players – you really have to love the sport a great deal to not hate the numbers. Basketball is not unlike competitive graduate programs with two or three-percent admissions rates – in truth, both systems are incredibly similar and selective, and pump out experts in basketball, medicine, law, etc. who are the very best in their fields.

It’s not a perfect parallel to the FFF, but it’ll work; having made it to Stanford, starting in mid-November, we also began ascending to the second tier of selectivity when we started applying to the big firms – the big consulting and banking firms that sit in the East, where the weather is miserable enough to actually warrant wearing a suit every day.

It’s true: We’re not orthodox candidates for these firms, mostly because of the number of flip-flops that we own, but also because many California natives (like myself) have grown up with our heads in the sand, far away from the trading floor. Thus far, we’ve been out of sight and out of mind.

But there’s no denying the value of a student who can think analytically, a student creative and talented enough to innovate a new satellite or successful mobile app. There’s no reason Stanford students can’t be useful in finance – putting our naivete aside, the skills we’ve honed from growing up in a world of sprawling creativity are valuable, and more importantly, profitable.

But like the NBA, it’s a numbers game. At the end of the day, only the best will be recruited to the best. We all know the names: Sorgan Manly, GCB, AinBay.

The problem is: Here at Stanford, we’re all pretty great – smart, driven, and in some cases, beautiful – so the label “best” isn’t quite as easily acquired or defined as when we were in high school and had two important numbers to our name – or when our athletic talent could be aggregated into points-per-game averages.

The thing is, these firms don’t mind much – it doesn’t really matter that Joe wrote his thesis on counterterrorism in Afghanistan or that Susan specializes in string theory. What matters is that both Joe and Susan will learn how to optimize a stock portfolio a lot quicker than most new recruits. Raw intelligence, pure IQ, aptitude that can be quantified and stacked against others – that’s what recruiters come here for.

And that’s the great thing about attending a brand-name school like Stanford. Here, we can excel laterally, without necessarily stepping on each other’s toes for the sake of a rank. I’ll make the bold statement that we didn’t come to Stanford to yet again scale and clamber over our peers to succeed. We don’t and shouldn’t have to.

There has to be a reason we chose Stanford beyond the financial industry. Looking beyond recruiting season, I really do believe that if Wall Street is your destination, virtually all roads will take you there. But other options still exist. Placing too much stock (pun intended) on firms that want the best only for the sake of having the “best” renders that choice in colleges that you had, however many years ago, somewhat null. I thank my lucky stars every day that I’m not a great basketball player – although I had my moments in 8th grade P.E. – because I can’t imagine wanting and doing the same thing so damn much for so damn long. I usually don’t even like my choice in groceries the day after I buy them.

I don’t write this to discourage or dissuade anyone from applying to these firms. They’re big, exciting and pay extraordinarily well – plus, I might’ve sneaked my own application through. But I’d like to caution against spending too much valuable time on campus thinking about life off campus, drinking martinis in the Big Apple and running into Taylor Swift in Central Park. We have much better apples and plenty of our own celebrities to toast to here, in California.

More importantly, it’s essential to always keep in mind the reason we came here in the first place – to pick a great major and learn everything we can about it, assisted by the greatest professors and students in the world. The stock market may not wait on anyone, but I think we can afford to let it wait for us.

Contact Uttara Sivaram at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/01/30/financial-needs-and-deeds/feed/0A MacBook walks into the Libraryhttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/01/16/a-macbook-walks-into-the-library/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/01/16/a-macbook-walks-into-the-library/#commentsThu, 16 Jan 2014 01:46:48 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1081516I didn’t expect to feel this far from home in Britain. There are the immediate differences — women pushing strollers with one hand and smoking cigarettes in the another, cars hurtling at you from what must be the wrong direction, a weather with a wicked sense of humor and speed bumps referred to as “humped zebras.”

Quirky disparities like these aren’t necessarily unique to Britain; a week in Paris where everyone generally looks like they just came from a very chic funeral debunked my Copernican assumption that the world revolves entirely around American values and culture.

But then again, there are far more interesting blogs dedicated to these overt and often hilarious differences between our teenage nation and ancient European civilizations. I was actually thinking of making one after I asked my British friend whether it was cold enough to wear pants that day, unaware that in the U.K., the terms “pants” and “panties” are one and the same. Yet somehow, I feel obliged to share the (marginally) more meaningful aspects of my study abroad experience at Oxford University, the intellectual hub of the world, even after they stopped making Harry Potter movies.

American and British students take a fundamentally different approach to college, shaped by our respective high school systems. As high school juniors, British students have to narrow their course load to three or four “A-Level” subjects, which limit the majors they can apply for in college and, based on their final exam scores, which colleges they can apply to at all.

Whereas a student with a 3.4 high school GPA in the U.S. could apply to Harvard and pray very intently that his or her admissions officer is dyslexic, a student with merely average A-level scores would not be allowed to apply to top colleges in the U.K. Thus, upon entering college, the average British student is already locked into a major after years of academic funnels; my own schizophrenic path through majors would have been snuffed out before I got to Stanford.

But I never really saw what was wrong with a more eclectic approach to college until I turned in my first paper at Oxford. In classic British style, my professor stated dryly, “They call it a ‘well-rounded’ education because you spend most of your time making circles around the disciplines you love rather than simply studying them.”

We (the “American” students) had each written 10 superb pages about Margaret Thatcher’s legacy, pulling from modern perspectives, economics, biographical information, politics and media culture to create an excellent expose on the former Prime Minister.

“I asked you a question,” our professor said disapprovingly after grading the essays, “and instead of an answer, I got every piece of information about Thatcher except for perhaps the identity of her hairdresser.”

I should point out that said professor was so relentlessly sarcastic that I could never actually follow what he was actually trying to say; regardless, he had chosen this prime opportunity to criticize America’s insistence upon providing students with a broad education. He argued that what we gained in latitude, we lost in depth.

Perhaps this had some truth to it. Indeed, after shrinking in our seats for a full 30 minutes, we all resolved to be far more precise in our writing and absolutely never include the name of the hairdresser for Tony Blair, the subject of our next essay. We didn’t receive too much praise for that one either, although we were thankfully spared another tirade about “loosey-goosey” education.

That’s the other thing — it seems as though we’ve become very accustomed to praise following our work here at Stanford, whether it’s a grade, an award or even a pat on the back from your professor as you triumphantly exit class.

At Oxford, you’d be lucky to get a grade at all, much less any kind of verbal compliment. I found myself craving some kind of acknowledgment that I was doing OK — I started observing my professors’ facial movements so intently that I somehow decided that a nose twitch was bad and an eyebrow raise was good. To be honest, I think he just had allergies.

For a while, I was resentful of this strange and tiresome way of getting an education. I was writing long, inane essays on technical subjects that could’ve been aptly illustrated with a graph; I was sitting through lengthy, detailed lectures on post-war economic strategy, much of which was spent waiting for eyebrows to rise, and I was assigned countless readings that were never, ever available in e-book format. It simply wasn’t an efficient education.

I think that’s the crux of the difference between the education we’re receiving here, on this sun-soaked campus, and the education that our peers are receiving across the Atlantic. Scholarly “efficiency” is not only sub-optimal — it’s downright ignored at institutions like Oxford.

And while I’d like to pick a side and stubbornly argue its merits, comparing these two systems really is like comparing apples to oranges (both of which, I should point out, are generally unavailable in Britain, along with most vegetables of the green variety).

The most I could do was marvel at how different college life was for the standard British student. For example, it was stunning to wander into a cathedral and realize that it’s actually a library, with spiraling staircases and walls lined with books all the way to the ceiling. It’s even more remarkable to see students reading those books, pen and paper in hand, studying in minute detail the first principles of modern logic or the theme of immortality in Shakespeare’s 18th sonnet.

I couldn’t help but admire the way these students think and learn, as I sheepishly lugged my MacBook Pro to a corner of the gaping chamber and tried my best not to pull up the Wiki page for Wittgenstein or SparkNotes the assigned Nietzsche reading. From Oxford, I re-learned how to sit, open a book, read it, and if I was really motivated, use my own brain to interpret it.

This often resulted in a full day spent entirely upon dissecting a single page of text. But I started to realize that in the academic world, there is no opportunity cost, no Pareto inefficiency.

There’s a lot we can learn from Oxford’s example; conversely, there’s just as much my British friends could take away from a quarter spent at Stanford.

It’s a source of great pride for me that a Stanford philosophy major could outline the mechanics of an action potential while a pre-med student could just as easily engage in a conversation about Kant’s categorical imperative. The computer science department at Oxford was about the size of my apartment in Oak Creek and not nearly as populated on the weekdays, something I really do consider a shame, considering the massive relevance that CS has on today’s increasingly digital world.

Oxford University is an institution that prides itself upon tradition — indeed, after attending dinner in jeans and being seated nearly outside the dining hall, I began to understand the importance of custom, not only at Oxford, but also in the U.K. as a whole.

Yet just as a healthy dose of modernity is just what D.Phil ordered for the regal and lordly Oxford University, there is no doubt in my mind that we would benefit from returning to a more traditional form of education, and at least every now and then, sitting down, shutting up and being wholly unafraid to lose a few hours getting lost in something we love.

— Uttara Sivaram ’15

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2014/01/16/a-macbook-walks-into-the-library/feed/1Saint Sandberghttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/04/24/saint-sandberg/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/04/24/saint-sandberg/#commentsWed, 24 Apr 2013 13:34:29 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1076696Last week, my friend Laine told me that she had the distinct pleasure of nearly getting knocked off her bike when Sheryl Sandberg prematurely opened the door of her large black Escalade. Thankfully, she swerved quickly and made it to class unharmed.

“Well, this time,” I told Laine, “I’m glad you didn’t lean in.”

As a disclaimer, that may be the funniest one-liner you’ll find in this article. But Laine sure didn’t appreciate it; in fact, she’s a huge Sheryl Sandberg fan and almost regretted swerving out of the way. This is not to say that I don’t like Ms. Sandberg – as an intelligent, beautiful female student with big dreams, I should be at every book signing, conference, Q&A, Japanese tea ceremony that Sandberg hosts.

But in reality, the most I’ve done is read “Lean In,” since it was a gift from my uncle and I had quickly found out that reading “Game of Thrones” wasn’t nearly as fun as watching the TV series.

To be sure, “Lean In” was interesting, and at times, informative. But on the whole, it was relatively uninspiring. I felt that the book could have been more aptly titled “Common Sense for the Average Businesswoman, Plus 10 Bonus Tips for How to Keep Your Hydrangeas Healthy While Taking Care of a Kid in the Middle of Your Hong Kong Business Trip.” In other words, it seemed like a glorified instruction booklet for ambitious businesswomen and not the “Feminist Manifesto” that the media likes to glorify.

Let me be clear, there’s nothing wrong with this kind of literature. But it’s always a little dangerous to use a personal success story as the basis for an entire movement. This tension was made very apparent two years ago, when Amy Chua published her “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” eventually excerpted by the Wall Street Journal. I remember that, for a few weeks, it was a huge phenomenon, sparking furious debates via online forums, blog posts and more. Even my parents started looking at me a little suspiciously, wondering how I would’ve turned out had they been a little more feline in their parenting methods (my mom started growling when it came to going out at night – thanks for that, Ms. Chua). I greatly appreciated what Chua had brought to the table, but I found her generalization of Western vs. Eastern parenting to be surprisingly unscientific – uncharacteristic of a Yale law professor.

Sandberg makes similarly sweeping generalizations – her tendency to conflate female empowerment with ducking through loopholes in the corporate system seems inconsistent. In one chapter, Sandberg emphasizes, in ringing rhetoric, the necessity of equality in the workplace. But in the next, she elaborates upon the cartwheels women must perform in order to navigate through an antiquated corporate environment as nothing more than smart strategy. In other words, she vacillates between (1) denouncing social inequity and (2) manipulating the same social inequity to one’s advantage.

Sandberg made this dilemma – the tension between ideological equality and social reality – clear in the body of the book. But publicly, she chooses the ideological banner and, as a result, is hailed as an exemplar for all women – that is, one with a book promotion deal and a convenient personal spot in Facebook’s parking lot.

Without a doubt, Sandberg is a highly qualified example for so many inspired young women, and Amy Chua’s Harvard-bound children have work ethics that should be admired. Neither woman has any obligation to the world at large, and oftentimes, it’s necessary to break up social issues into more manageable strata – Western parents, young women in business, etc.

But overextending personal anecdotes is a poor way of introducing a general idea or assertion. They become inconsistent, and soon, the idea itself is defined by its exceptions – many of which contributed to the slow decline of the “Tiger Mother” piece.

Sandberg has earned her fair share of criticism as well. But she and her message have proven to be more resilient that I had expected, and I see the effects of her work here at Stanford, whether it’s for the upcoming Q&A with the woman herself or a campus organization with Sandberg’s name stamped on its latest event.

If I sound overly critical, I don’t mean to be. I’m just wary about the influence that powerful and successful women wield in today’s (much-needed) feminist movement. The way I see it, these women have the potential to do a lot of good for the women making 70 cents on the dollar, the women who are fired due to age or pregnancy, the women who struggle to receive adequate compensation for maternity leave. The experience that women like Sandberg have can be of great use. But no single experience should be chopped, sliced, diced into a memoir and sold as a manifesto.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/04/24/saint-sandberg/feed/1America’s weighty dilemmahttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/americas-weighty-dilemma/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/americas-weighty-dilemma/#respondWed, 10 Apr 2013 13:19:26 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1076325On March 11, 2013, a judge invalidated New York City’s ban on large sugary drinks, one day before it was to go into effect. The lead lawyer for the beverage industry was quoted describing the regulation as created by “scientists in the room, working with the mayor, creating a regulation here that is going to cost people a ton of money.”

It is dismal indeed that such a promising measure was struck down not on the basis of ineffectiveness or public harm, but rather, because the billion-dollar beverage industry would lose its profits. It becomes even more depressing when you acknowledge that the population of obese Americans has been gaining new members at an alarming rate over the past decade. But as with most issues nowadays, this problem has been quantified. People are beginning to pay attention to the downright frightening statistics that have been uncovered: More than half of American adults are considered overweight, with nearly one-quarter of the adult population – 40 million people – clinically defined as obese. The number of children considered obese has exceeded 12 million.

Sometimes it’s pretty easy to forget about America’s weight issue. It’s not just about being in Stanford, where our chiseled athletes look as though they’ve been finely sculpted from marble and the rest of us wear expensive (and very forgiving) athletic clothing to achieve the same end. Indeed, California, the virtual land of the vegans, has spearheaded a powerful movement towards organic produce, yoga, and nearly inedible wheatgrass drinks. We’ve been impressively progressive in this sense. In fact, after spending some time in Mississippi, where I didn’t encounter one green food item apart from some fried Brussels sprouts, I can personally appreciate this movement.

But as always, Stanford proves to be an exceptional case. This is not a case complicated by locale. It’s a problem that has spilled over into the economic fabric of our society, ingrained in the capitalistic motivations of the industries that have unfailingly fed our midnight cravings. In other words, selling and consuming unhealthy food has become dangerously economical. And while students here are blessed with healthy and relatively inexpensive dining options, even Town & Country Village offers some less-healthy-than-granola food items that, if consumed without caution, can pose a serious threat to the student body.

We’ve seen this problem before, wrapped in a little white cylinder. The tobacco industry has by no means been an innocent spectator on the sidelines of America’s declining health – and it can be argued that the food industry’s impact on public health rivals that of the tobacco companies. But with the help of Congress, the public was able to employ a mixture of advertising sanctions and aggressive taxation to shrink the size and influence of the smoking industry to a fraction of its former self.

America’s weight problem also has a solution – but it’s important to note that these kinds of nationwide failures are neither coincidences nor accidents. In the case of rising obesity, they are the results of carefully constructed and interconnected corporate systems with three main players: the food industry, the weight-loss industry, and the healthcare industry. Thus, even as very educated Stanford students, we are not impervious to the very industries that feed us, strengthen us and cure us, seemingly with the best intentions.

The first player, the food industry, presents a paradox in and of itself. The New York Times recently published an article titled “The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food.” The long feature chronicles a hush-hush rendezvous at the Pillsbury headquarters, where the most powerful men in the food industry convened a conclave starring CEOs from Nestle, Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter and Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars. It was no longer an option for these companies to keep ignoring the rising rate of obesity, which had been publicly attributed to their products.

Although bringing together the men and women who had revolutionized the food market seemed to be a step in the right direction towards solving America’s weight crisis, the meeting turned out to be relatively fruitless – the consequence of a frustrating, game theoretic Prisoner’s Dilemma in which no one company in the food industry is willing to cut down on sugar or far content for fear of losing their market share. Thus, food isn’t getting any healthier; in fact, it’s getting sweeter, saltier and fattier. The food companies refuse to consider the possibility that perhaps by cooperating fully with one another, they can capture an even greater population of Americans who truly want to eat healthier, as well as those who don’t know any better.

And as if two players weren’t bad enough, the third presents an even more disheartening dilemma: the medical industry. Although it may be the less obvious profiteer from increasing obesity rates, the healthcare system is making enormous gains from the increase in likelihood of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. Time magazine recently published a revealing expose on the counterintuitively large six and seven-figure salaries that executives in both for-profit and non-profit receive. This is deeply rooted in the fact that hospitals collect the vast majority of their profits from diagnosing sickness, not from improving health. In particular, the fee-per-service system rakes in money from the blood tests, MRIs, pet scans and other tests that the growing number of sick patients undergo. The bottom line? Hospitals do not gain from a healthier America any more than the food and weight-loss industries do.

Stanford has a neat take on these three industries. We eat at dining halls, work out in Arrillaga, and go to Vaden (as sparingly as possible) in a contained, regulated manner. Stanford, in a classically paternalistic manner, understands that left to our own devices, we easily fall prey to a profit-driven market. But as soon as we get to the very edges of Campus Drive, we become increasingly vulnerable to the economic traps that our food, weight-loss, and medical industries have laid out for us.

This is a problem that our public policy majors and professors have and will continue to tackle. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to think of a social issue that hasn’t at least been partially resolved by the great minds we have on campus.

But as for the rest of us, this is something to think about, if not with our heads, at least with our stomachs. I’m floored every single day by how healthy and happy students are here at Stanford. Thus, even if it’s really just to preserve our place on College Prowler’s college rankings, let’s keep ourselves as healthy and happy as humanly possible.

Keep yourself healthy by emailing Uttara at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/04/10/americas-weighty-dilemma/feed/0Deferred gratificationhttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/03/06/deferred-gratification/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/03/06/deferred-gratification/#commentsWed, 06 Mar 2013 23:59:38 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1075639Last week, the admissions office received around 520 “Optional Update Forms” from those they had both blessed and cursed in a single email. Indeed, one of my good friends from high school was deferred, and I remember trying to console her and congratulate her at the same time. The only other situation to which I could liken this one was the time I tried using an Icy-Hot pack after seeing that compelling ad starring Shaquille O’Neal. In fact, I repeated this analogy to my glum high school friend, but it ended up making her feel even worse. Needless to say I bungled the job, but there’s no denying that being deferred is one of the most complex, confusing, and frustrating situations to be in.

I would know. You may not believe that someone with my intelligence and wit could have possibly gotten deferred, but deferred I was. All party planning was halted: the music ceased; the waiters were sent packing; the flowers were thrown out, and the jazz quartet made for the hills. In other words, I sat at my computer chair, re-reading that terrible email with a combined sense of severe disappointment and relief.

This is not to say that I’m not (in hindsight) incredibly thankful for the second chance Stanford gave me. However, I must say that sending a deferral is almost worse than simply rejecting the kid and letting him or her get on with their applications to Brown and Yale and wherever else, not to mention their second semester of senior year – a semester of low GPAs and high BACs.

Instead, a deferral presents seniors with another semester of high stress and continued participation in school activities that no one cared about to begin with. I remember sitting resentfully in my Speech and Debate tournaments, flipping through The Economist for my upcoming extemporaneous speech and executing it with so much anger and impatience that the judge offered me a handkerchief and requested that I stop spitting when I talked because his shirt was getting soggy.

It was both infuriating and amazing that my most stellar high school semester was my last. I somehow got straight A’s, started a new organization on campus (which was unanimously voted into extinction the year after I graduated – turns out no one truly cares about saving the Bengal tigers), organized a bone marrow drive, auditioned for the lead in the Spring musical, and taught soccer to kids from low-income families (they ended up playing soccer while I did their math homework). This was in addition to keeping in step with the obligations I had as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, member of the ASB, and (for some reason), chief financial officer for the Persian club. If I may say so, it was a job well done.

At least, that’s what I thought when I eventually got in. I truly believed that my acceptance was derivative of the hard work I had put into the last couple of months, just so I could fill that darn Optional Update Form to the exact word limit. And perhaps it was. However, I’ll never forget the day during Admit Weekend when I met the admissions officer who was responsible for my acceptance. When I met him, he recited one of his favorite lines from my Common App essay. And then he asked me why I never turned in an Optional Update Form.

It must have been a mistake in processing. Somehow, the Admissions Office hadn’t received the form that I had given up any semblance of human decency and dignity I had left to fill out. Turns out that my case just needed a little more arguing. Regardless, I was shocked.

Severe disappointment is a strong motivator. Mix it in with a tiny speck of hope, and you get a neurotic teenager with the will and capability to do pretty amazing things. When I was deferred, I was personally offended that the school of my dreams had put me so unceremoniously on hold. Part of me wished Stanford had rejected me, just so I wouldn’t have to go through the same cycle of hard work, anticipation, and disappointment twice. I was a weary high school senior who just wanted to pledge allegiance to Cal out of spite and get some C’s on the next couple of exams. Every senior deserves that.

Watching my friend go through the same process makes me both nostalgic and a little angry. If you asked me last year whether I thought deferrals were a good idea, I would’ve said yes, absolutely. Today, I’m not so sure. The college application process is a nasty one, and it makes students do good things for the worst reasons. Most of those things will never be acknowledged outside of a short Stanford Daily column, years after the fact. And the natural feeling of inferiority is hard to ignore when you confront the inescapable early or regular admit during the first couple weeks of freshman year. It wears off, but leaves a light scar.

So I wish the best of luck to those who were deferred this year. If you look at the numbers, it’s harder to get deferred than it is to get accepted. Thus, I give you my hearty congratulations for beating the odds, along with a healthy dose of my condolences for the parties and the C’s and the unexcused absences you missed out on for the sake of that terrible Optional Update Form. I assure you that if things don’t work out this April, yellow and blue tend to look good on everyone. But if they do, this harrowing and exhausting senior year might just have been worth the trouble.

Uttara will accept, not defer, your emails at usiv@stanford.edu.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2013/03/06/deferred-gratification/feed/4PETE could improve solar techhttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/pete-could-improve-solar-tech/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/pete-could-improve-solar-tech/#commentsThu, 12 Aug 2010 00:34:12 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1042026Stanford engineers have found a new method for converting sunlight into electricity, which could significantly improve existing photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies.

This new method, called photon enhanced thermionic emission (PETE), was discovered by a University research group headed by materials science and engineering Prof. Nick Melosh. Melosh went public with the research on Aug. 1, publishing a paper on the subject in Nature Materials.

“Despite some of the outrageous claims on the Internet,” Melosh said, “this is not a panacea, but is a unique method that can capture both heat and light, and may one day be a valuable part of the energy solution.”

Photovoltaic solar technology currently relies on semiconductors, which use photons from the sun to excite electrons, ultimately generating an electrical current. This mechanism, however, becomes less efficient with high temperatures, precluding the possibility of using the waste heat to fuel a secondary generator. As a result, photovoltaic and thermal energy conversion are mutually exclusive processes, and current scientific efforts have focused on optimizing one of the two.

Melosh’s new approach, if successful, would solve this dilemma by making high temperatures favorable to semiconductor-mediated energy conversion. By using the semiconductor gallium nitrate, coated with cesium, the researchers constructed a parallel plate thermionic emission device, in which higher temperatures will excite more electrons from the semiconductor cathode and generate current.

When photons strike the cathode, they increase the population of electrons that can participate in the thermionic emission process, which Melosh and his team dubbed “photon enhancement.”

Since higher temperatures increase the efficiency of this process, the researchers envision solar concentrators, which can multiply the sun’s intensity by 500 times, focusing light on a PETE device and siphoning unused heat to drive other thermal conversion systems.

While current monocrystalline solar panels boast an efficiency of around 26 percent, Melosh expects this new process to increase efficiency to 50-60 percent.

And since PETE’s optimal temperature point is achieved well after 200 degrees Celsius, it can function in areas such as the Mojave Desert, whereas today’s solar technology usually fails in temperatures above 100 degrees. However, this new technology is not limited to such high-temperature climates, if large parabolic dishes are used to concentrate the direct sunlight.

“It will actually work a little better in cold but sunny climes,” Melosh said, “but mostly as long as there is direct sun, it should be able to work.”

“This needs solar concentrations of at least a few hundred times, thus is most likely to be used for large scale utilities, though could also be used for remote areas as well,” he added.

While the cost of these dishes, in addition to the semiconductor material and cesium, is not inexpensive, the output of this process has the potential to rival that of fossil fuel combustion.

At the moment, tests have been run using gallium nitride, a common material for household electronics. While the research team has demonstrated the PETE process, stability and cost-effectiveness remain obstacles for the technology.

“We have currently only shown the proof of principle experimentally, and shown theoretically that it could be quite efficient,” Melosh said.

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/08/12/pete-could-improve-solar-tech/feed/1University water use eyed for improvementhttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/07/22/university-water-use-eyed-for-improvement/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/07/22/university-water-use-eyed-for-improvement/#respondThu, 22 Jul 2010 00:36:53 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1041853Building on a history of sustainable leadership, and in the wake of recent Bay Area droughts, Stanford is ramping up efforts to conserve water and adopt eco-friendly practices around campus.

Stanford, looking to be a role model for the community, has set for itself a number of key goals to preserve the valuable resource. The University meets the restrictions of both the General Use Permit (GUP) under Santa Clara County and also the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), which allocates 3.033 million gallons per day to the campus.

Currently, Stanford receives potable water from the SFPUC, which in turn collects water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in the Sierra Nevada and other local watersheds.

Stanford’s history of water consumption is notable, as the University has made a marked effort to decrease the water usage in individual, day-to-day functions. Due to Stanford’s constantly expanding campus, it has implemented more stringent guidelines for its new buildings.

Due to its constantly expanding campus, the University has implemented more stringent guidelines for its new buildings. While much has been accomplished, students say there are still more opportunities to decrease the University's freshwater footprint. (AILEEN LU/The Stanford Daily)

In new residential and public bathroom faucets, for example, Stanford aims to decrease its consumption from 2.2 gpm (gallons per minute) to 0.5 gpm with its newly engineered water-efficient equipment. The standard 1.6 gpf (gallons per flush) of public toilets are expected to reduce to 1.28 gpf with these conservational practices.

Stanford has additionally sponsored environmentally conscious student-run organizations around campus, notably Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS). As both co-president of SSS and head of the SSS “Water Group,” Siddhartha Oza ’11 has closely observed the University’s public water system and has been impressed with its efforts to conserve water around campus.

“The University has provided funding in the past for student initiatives seeking to save water,” Oza said. “As a result, Students for a Sustainable Stanford was able to install a rainwater catchment system for a house on the Row, saving gallons of usable water that would otherwise have flowed into drains.”

In addition to student-run organizations, Stanford has provided for a 24-hour maintenance hotline allowing students to immediately contact help about broken sprinkler heads or unnecessary water waste that they have noticed. Oza’s own experience with the hotline was positive. He said that a semi-leaky faucet in his dorm was fixed within a day of his call.

“Stanford is remarkably efficient with its water supplies,” Oza said. “[Stanford’s] water conservation program has reduced usage by 15 percent of the past eight years, and that statistic is certainly believable.”

Oza also explained that Stanford has implemented low-flow shower heads in dorms, trayless dining halls, dual-flush toilets and no-flush urinals in restrooms, high-efficiency clothes washing machines and sprinkler systems set to water plants at night to limit evaporation.

Yashraj Narang ’11 has also noticed Stanford’s environmentally conscious practices, including that there were no water fountains in his dorm, Crothers Hall.

“Crothers was renovated before last year; I believe they had water fountains before then,” Narang said. “When last year began, Stanford Housing told all of us that we should get water from the sinks instead, and they gave us free water bottles to make it easier to do so.”

But these changes were not universally popular.

“Both the trayless policy and the lack of water fountains met resistance when students first found out about them,” Narang said.

The inconvenience of constantly having to buy or fill water bottles irked many students, but Narang said he was not fazed.

“I don’t see [it] as being a major setback in my daily life,” he said. “Honestly, if Stanford is saving thousands of gallons of water by implementing these changes, I think they’re a good idea.”

By targeting individual departments and constructing realistic guidelines that will still satisfy the needs of particular buildings, Stanford has earned awards such as the Clean Bay Award and the 2009 Silicon Valley Water Conservation Award in the Large Organization category.

However, Stanford has not always been successful in its attempts to make the campus more eco-friendly — the Y2E2 building, also known as the Jerry Yang & Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building, was hailed as a major step forward in recognizing and resolving today’s ecological problems, but met with criticism after a report stated that the energy consumption initially projected by the building’s creators was much lower than the actual energy consumption.

In Oza’s words, “Much has been accomplished, but there are still opportunities for the University to shrink its freshwater footprint.”

]]>https://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/07/22/university-water-use-eyed-for-improvement/feed/0new072210water2AILEEN LU/The Stanford DailySkype relocates to Stanford Research Parkhttps://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/07/15/skype-relocates-to-stanford-research-park/
https://old.stanforddaily.com/2010/07/15/skype-relocates-to-stanford-research-park/#commentsThu, 15 Jul 2010 00:33:43 +0000http://www.stanforddaily.com/?p=1041795Effective as early as October, Skype will be moving its San Jose and Brisbane offices to 3210 Porter Drive, located in the Stanford Research Park. This move, mirroring social network Facebook and Tesla Motors’ recent relocations, affirms the importance of the park to the Silicon Valley’s high-tech community.

Founded in 1951, the Stanford Research Park boasts acclaim as the world’s first technology-focused office park. The park is predominantly home to scientific, electronics and research-oriented companies, and is often credited with having a significant role in the creation and development of several Silicon Valley technology firms. Following Hewlett-Packard’s start in the park and subsequent success in the electronics industry, interest in Palo Alto and in the Stanford community has only heightened among advanced tech companies.

As early as October, Skype employees will move into the company's new office at 3210 Porter Drive. Skype joins Facebook and Tesla in its relocation to the research park. (Aileen Lu/The Stanford Daily)

“We are thrilled that Skype decided to create an office here at the Stanford Research Park,” said Tiffany Griego, the associate director of Stanford Real Estate Operations. “[Skype] is a solid company with a lot of growth potential. This move will really create jobs — it’ll especially bring attention to the park.”

Skype, which enables its users to communicate through voice or face-to-face over the Internet, has enjoyed increasing popularity since its Luxembourg-based creation in 2003. In 2009, Skype was purchased from eBay by an investor group led by Silver Lake; this transaction has given the software company more room to expand, as Silver Lake has reached a settlement agreement with Skype’s sister company Joltid Ltd., founded by Skype creators Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis.

“Skype will be well positioned to move forward under new owners with ownership and control over its core technology,” said eBay president and CEO John Donahoe in a Skype press release.

Skype’s decision to move away from San Jose, the location of eBay’s headquarters, to the Stanford Research Park, may benefit both the company and the University. The research park, a coveted location for high-tech industries, offers access to talent, resources, other advanced companies, University libraries and professors as advisors and counselors. The influx of social networking companies into the research park will expose these businesses to some of the brightest technical minds in the United States — and vice versa.

“Skype moving near Stanford should be a plus for campus job opportunities,” said Cyrus Navabi ‘11. “Having young companies like Facebook and Skype around is part of what makes Stanford such an innovative and exciting place.”

“We hope to attract some of the best and brightest talent in the Valley, especially engineers who are skilled at building ultra-scalable infrastructure,” said Skype CEO Josh Silverman in a press release.

Skype’s lease with the University entails a considerable 90,000 square feet of land set aside for regional marketing and business development. It will join locations in Estonia, Prague and Stockholm — offices dedicated to the constant maintenance and advancement of Skype software.

The move of an internationally popular company to Stanford’s backyard might also help those students seeking real-life application of their classroom studies.

“Skype’s products are really well-known and exciting,” said Chris Anderson ’11. “It’d be pretty cool to talk to your mom on a product you worked on.”